The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

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It probably helps a bit if you're as old as I am to put this number into context. According to the latest industry numbers Apple is now 20% of the entire US consumer electronics market. One of the things that struck me was that Apple achieves this without even having a product in one of the top five categories (that is, they're only even competing in four of the top five).

Now of course, we know that Apple has been extremely successful in recent years. But those who have been around for more than one cycle of the technology wheel like myself find Apple's turnaround quite incredible. Precisely because it is a turnaround. And it's turnarounds, the refashioning of a company, that is the real rarity in the business world.

At any one time someone is going to be the leading producer or retailer of whatever it is: that's just the nature of the beast, that there will a be number one, a number two and so on. But such positions usually only dcome to a company once. The company is born and then for some reason is hugely better at doing something than everyone else. Sears with catalogue sales for example. Ford with the mass production of cars. Apple with those first generally usable and desirable personal computers. Atari with games machines: that's pretty much the story of every market leading company. Then comes the nemesis. Technology changes or the company loses its way by other means. It becomes other people who dominate specific niches: it's not so much that the company itself dies, it's the niche that it was exploiting which does often enough.

And here's the thing: it's rare, very rare indeed, for a company to be able to do this twice. The skills, talents and internal culture that made it the greatest exploiter of one particular technology or niche are rarely transferrable over to another one. But that is exactly what Apple has actually managed to do. OK, we might say that phones and tablets are really just computers like PCs but if we are going to say that then why isn't Microsoft doing as well as Apple in those fields? Quite: there does seem to be a definite difference. Apple most certainly lost their early dominance of the PC industry: but they've managed to create a new dominance in these modern consumer electronics.

I'm finding it very difficult to think of any other company that has managed this: although no doubt someone will be able to prove me wrong in the comments.